Don't forget the perpetual upgrade issue, this is common with most Microsoft products. Basically Microsoft and Intel (back when Intel was the primary CPU vendor on PC's because there weren't any really viable alternatives) hit on a deal, with every new OS from Microsoft it would require, for the most part, more RAM and the next generation of CPU. Microsoft puts in code that checks the hardware. I heard it said many times by various developers, that if that hardware check wasn't there, then Win98/XP etc would still be able to run efficiently on an old DX machine. In essense, when new software comes out the user has to go buy new hardware to be able to use it.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

Oh I know you were being sarcastic, i'm just saying that surely they would have access to something better than DDR2 given the scope of the project.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

Yes i know that, it reduces the timing for the data throughput, but what I mean is surely such a large system wish such a price tag will use something similar to DDR3, which to my knowledge is similar to what the old DDR2 cards were, as in being to expensive to be used for system RAM in general consumer machines at present.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

Can you imagine trying to hunt down an errant stick of DDR2 in a field of memory like that?

Surely they will be using something better than DDR2. or have DDR2 with an obscenely high core speed.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

Chris Austin wrote:

I'm not really a mac guy, but what do you find bloated about OS X?

My thoughts exactly. I've always been lead to believe that the family of mac OS's have been built around a unix kernel. which is exactly why they are more stable than windows machines, less resource dependant and therefore faster when compared to a windows machine running on an equivelant processor, and a processing powerhouses but useless for non-productivity software. Which is exactly why graphic developers desktop publishing and a large number of other industries rely almost entirely on Apple machines... well they used to.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

NRobbins wrote:

But the best was clearly the OS on the Acorn RISC OS - beautiful, functional and easy to program!

Someone is still living in the days of Neanderthal.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

Christian Graus wrote:

The Amiga OS, right ?

Whatever happened ot the supposed rebirth of Amiga with their own OS?

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

it was sponsored by big green no doubt.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

David Wulff wrote:

Yeah, it is in my subject line.

But you said you couldn't find it. :). they still have a DOS prompt of some description in Vista. Windows will never fully be rid of DOS despite their claims to the contrary. Don't you just love the half truths of the big green hairy monster? I know i do. ;P

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

Chris Buckett wrote:

Yes, I did forget, (but i was being a little facetious just to make the point ).

Never the less... it will still be a fun prank. :laugh:

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

David Wulff wrote:

Just nitpicking here, but there is no 'Shutdown' command.

There is actually a shutdown command line in every windows version to date. In XP it was called oddly enough, Shutdown. I'm not going to touch Vista for at lerast 6 months, probably closer to a year. But it still has a shutdown command line, it's just a matter of knowing what it is called. Shutdown from the start menu makes a remote call to this .EXE so it is entirely possible to write a snippet of code for example that runs in the background that will shut the system down when it hears a certain word. I have, just for the fun of it, a small .EXE that shells out the shutdown .EXE with an immediate forced shutdown without any warning of any kind.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

David Wulff wrote:

I don't see that as any different from having someone physically at your PC from a risk position -- people have to take responsibility for their own actions, you can't blame everything on someone else.

This is the difference between word recognition and voice recognition. I think that Microsoft would opt for the word recognition because it makes things easier to use for every user of that system.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

:laugh:

Chris Buckett wrote:

Hello, welcome to my podcast. Format C:,

Did you forget that drives that are in use can not be formatted?

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

charlieg wrote:

I've had my Dell laptop now for almost 3 years (about 100 days left in warranty), and I have this 'issue' with a graphics flicker. We've updated drivers, swapped graphics boards, still have the flicker. I know what is coming next - either a motherboard swap (shudder) or an OS re-install (shudder - shudder). These solutions seem to be pretty big hammers. So, you developers out there that maintain your own systems, you know who you are, especially the independents. We just don't have time to "scrub the hard drive" on a whim. Further, we usually have to have a really good reason to scrub the drive and reinstall the dozens of programs that we have installed. How many of you have had issues with your system (beta s/w excluded) such that an os re-install corrected the problem?

I found the problem right from the start. It's a Dell, nough said.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

And to have the forrect balance so that dimensions 3 through to 5 don't explode, every other dimention must implode. :laugh:

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

the time warp rocks my socks. :-D:-D:-D

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

Is that anything like the time warp? 'Take a step to the right'.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

I clicked the link that said "Line count of your biggest project". So how did I end up here?

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

CPallini wrote:

No, a (magic) theory able to join relativistic quantum mechanics with general relativity.

AHHH the grand unified theory of everything strikes again.

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME

Roger Wright wrote:

Yes - the 'ether' for one. And the gluons that hold everything together are invisible, too.

That is why super colliders are for. But they are somewhat inneficient when attempting to detect glouns. a famous phrase springs to mind. "Scotty we need more speed". and the reply was...

Life is nothing but an individuals perception of an immortals dream. - ME